Toronto is down to one luxury department store

Ask for the luxury department stores in this city and the answer still comes back as three names, two shut for over a year. Hudson's Bay closed for the last time on the afternoon of Sunday, June 1, 2025, and the three Canadian Saks Fifth Avenue stores went with it. Nordstrom had already gone two summers before.

The honest answer is one. Holt Renfrew runs six stores in Canada, two in Toronto and a third at Square One, the only full-line luxury department store left in the country. Cadillac Fairview has owned the Queen Street building since 2014, when the Bay sold it and leased it back. The upper floors are dark, the PATH concourse below still runs, and the ground floor Christmas windows are leased to Mars.

The collapse, with dates

Nordstrom opened at Chinook Centre in Calgary on September 19, 2014, then took three boxes here: the Eaton Centre in September 2016 at 213,000 square feet, Yorkdale that October, Sherway the next September. On March 2, 2023 it quit, seeing no realistic path to profitability. The seven Rack stores closed on May 14, the six full-line stores on June 13.

Hudson's Bay filed for creditor protection on March 7, 2025 before Justice Peter Osborne, carrying more than $1.1 billion in debt. Liquidation began in late March and worked through 80 Bay stores, three Saks Fifth Avenue and thirteen Saks Off 5th. Saks had opened its Toronto flagship inside the Queen Street Bay in February 2016, 150,000 square feet on a skybridge off the Eaton Centre. It lasted nine years. Canadian Tire bought the name and the stripes on May 15 for $30 million.

Holt Renfrew is now the entire category

Holt Renfrew opened at 50 Bloor Street West in March 1979, leaving a smaller store at number 144, and after four decades of annexing whatever came free next door it runs to 190,000 square feet. Franco Savastano took over as president and chief executive in October 2025, after Sebastian Picardo stepped down on September 30. Menswear came back into the building in December 2024, on the rebuilt third floor, ending a decade at 100 Bloor Street West. At Yorkdale, Chanel opened a 10,600 square foot concession that November, the largest in the world, with its own double-height door onto the mall hallway.

Competitive buying keeps a floor sharp, and no rival floor is left in the country to be wrong against. Watch that third floor over the next two seasons.

Bloor and Yorkville, minus a floor

Harry Rosen has been on Bloor Street more than 55 years, lately five floors and 50,000 square feet at number 82, and that store closes on September 12, 2026. Ian Rosen, third generation of the family that opened a 500 square foot shop on Parliament Street in 1954, is moving the flagship 200 metres to 153 Cumberland Street, 38,000 square feet on three levels. Alterations and online pickups resume there on September 20, so anything left with the tailor in early September comes back somewhere else. More on the strip in our Yorkville guide.

TNT, which Arie Assaraf and Carrie Richmond started in 1994, is the nearest thing to a designer floor the city has left. The Yorkville Village flagship at 87 Avenue Road opened in March 2024 with 20,000 square feet and, for the first time, men's and women's on one level. The Eglinton store at 390 Eglinton Avenue West stays shut on Sundays.

Queen West, Ossington, Spadina

gravitypope has been at 1010 Queen Street West since November 2012, 4,000 square feet, the first store Louise Dirks opened east of Alberta after starting in footwear on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton in 1990. Shoes are still the reason to go.

Sydney's, at 682 Queen Street West, has run since 2005 under Sydney Mamane, who spent six years in film wardrobe before apprenticing to a tailor and costume maker in 2000. Barena Venezia, John Smedley, Loake, and made-to-measure suiting altered in house.

Uncle Otis has sold contemporary menswear since 1991 and trades at 329 Spadina Avenue, noon to six, seven days, which on that block counts as banker's hours. Lost & Found keeps the same clock at 12 Ossington Avenue, is the only stockist of The Real McCoy's in Canada, and began in late 2010 as a coffee shop two friends turned into a clothing store.

Where the designer resale went

VSP at 1410 Dundas Street West is where much of the city's designer wardrobe changes hands. Britt Rawlinson opened it in 2013, twenty-seven years after her mother Dianne started Vespucci in Calgary.

I Miss You Vintage at 63 Ossington Avenue has handled the archive end since 2005, walk-in Wednesday to Sunday, noon to six.

A city does not lose three department stores in two years and get them back in boutiques.

What moved into the empty boxes

Simons took both former Nordstrom spaces. Yorkdale opened on August 14, 2025, 118,000 square feet over two levels, the chain's eighteenth store and its first in Toronto. The Eaton Centre followed on September 18, 112,000 square feet over three levels, with a Nike flagship in October and an Eataly in November filling the rest of the box. Simons sells nowhere near the price of the floors it replaced.

The luxury names went to Yorkdale instead of downtown. Tom Ford opened its first Canadian store there on December 23, 2025, just over 3,000 square feet between Loewe and a new Dior. Ami Paris took 2,500 square feet nearby, over a former Nespresso. Two boutiques do not equal a floor.

Not every loss was the Bay's. Comrags, the label Judy Cornish and Joyce Gunhouse started in 1983, closed its shop at 812 Dundas Street West after 42 years, and the website now reads, in full, we are now closed.

How to shop it now

Holt Renfrew Bloor connects to Bloor-Yonge by tunnel, Yorkdale has its own stop on Line 1, and the stock differs, so treat them as separate trips. Queen West and Ossington run on the 501 and the 63, and almost every independent there opens at noon, so an eleven o'clock start buys you a coffee and nothing else. VSP sits off the 505 Dundas line.

Ask who does the alterations and get the charge quoted at the till: Sydney's and Harry Rosen tailor in the building, plenty of shops send the work out. Get the return window on the receipt too: final sale is ordinary in small shops, and a thirty day department store habit will cost you.

That layer in one place, rather than one streetcar at a time, is what we are building. The shops approved so far are listed, waiting list open.

Common questions

Is Nordstrom still in Toronto?

No, Nordstrom closed its three Toronto stores, at the Eaton Centre, Yorkdale and Sherway Gardens, on June 13, 2023 and left Canada entirely. It announced the exit that March 2; the seven Rack stores had closed on May 14. Simons trades in the Yorkdale and Eaton Centre spaces now.

Did Hudson's Bay close all its stores?

Yes, all 80 Hudson's Bay stores closed by June 1, 2025, along with three Saks Fifth Avenue and thirteen Saks Off 5th. It had filed for creditor protection that March 7 with more than $1.1 billion in debt. Canadian Tire bought the name and the stripes for $30 million.

Where do you shop designer in Toronto now?

Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street and at Yorkdale is the only full-line luxury department store left in Canada, and TNT in Yorkville Village is the largest independent alternative. Past those, the buying has scattered into boutiques on Queen West, Ossington and Spadina, and into resale at VSP and I Miss You Vintage.

Every business above is independent, was verified open as of August 2026, and nobody paid to be here. If one has closed or moved, tell us at hello@shopwithin.co and we will fix it.

Curious where your own taste lands? What's your luxury language? takes two minutes, and within opens Toronto's boutique shelves on October 1.